It seems that just about every preacher, politician and youth worker has opinions about how much media young people consume today. Now, there’s some information much more exact than opinions.

“Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18-Year-Olds” from the Kaiser Family Foundation is the latest study to examine kids and their media consumption. The study, based on interviews with more than 2,000 students, contains tons of charts and graphs, a handful of stunning findings and some practical suggestions about what parents and others who care about kids can do to guide them through today’s media morass.

“Media play a central role in the lives of today’s children and adolescents,” the report states. This statement won’t surprise anyone who works with kids, but one thing that surprised researchers was the degree to which media consumption had surged since their last study in 1999.

Way back then, researchers examining the kinds of media available in children’s households described these households as “media rich.” Five years later, kids’ households are better described as “media saturated.”

“It is difficult to conceive of when (or how) today’s young people might avoid media and media messages, even if they wanted to limit their media exposure,” wrote the report’s authors, who include Stanford University’s Donald F. Roberts, co-author of an earlier book about kids and rock music titled It’s Not Only Rock and Roll.

I Want My MTV…and Internet…and Everything Else
Kids between 8 and 18 spend more than six hours a day consuming media, and thanks to multitasking (surfing the Web while listening to music), they take in eight and a half hours worth of media entertainment and information during those six hours.

Until more kids learn to live without sleeping, it seems most won’t spend more than six hours a day consuming media. “We are approaching (or have reached) a ceiling on media use,” say the report authors; but with multitasking on the increase, the intake of more and more kinds of media during that six-hour window is expected to continue growing.

Consuming media isn’t the only thing kids do, but it takes up a significant chunk of their daily lives. Here’s a look at how much time young people spend on some of the more important activities that fill their days:

Watching TV = 3:04
Hanging out with parents = 2:17
Hanging out with friends = 2:16
Listening to music = 1:44
Exercising, sports, etc. = 1:25
Watching movies/videos = 1:11
Using a computer = 1:02
Pursuing hobbies, clubs, etc. = 1:00

Media is a great leveling influence, and there’s amazing uniformity in the consumption patterns of all kinds of kids. The only significant differences are that boys seem to like video games more than girls and African-Americans like TV more than other groups.

Making a Difference
Parents, youth workers and others concerned about kids’ media consumption will be interested to know there are three key factors that influence the amount of time kids spend with media. These factors are related to three important issues: availability of media technology, household media environment and household rules governing media use.

As for technology, kids who have their own TV, video game equipment or computer in their bedrooms spend an average of two more hours consuming media than kids whose rooms are less well-equipped. In addition, kids who have TVs in their rooms spend less time on leisure reading than kids who don’t. The report found that more than two-thirds of young people between the ages of 8 and 18 have TVs in their rooms.

As for household environments, parents play an important role in guiding the ways their children relate to media. For example, the report talks at some length about what it calls “high TV-orientation homes.” The report found that half of kids surveyed live in homes where the TV is “usually” on, and 60 percent are in homes where TV is on during dinner. Perhaps it’s not surprising that such “high TV-orientation homes” create kids who are more media saturated than homes where there’s more balance between media and other activities.

When it comes to media use rules, there’s a significant difference between kids who grow up in “anything goes” homes and those who live with guidelines for media consumption.

Less than half of all young people surveyed live with any kind of controls on their media use, but those kids whose parents try to enforce some form of media rules routinely consume less media than kids who have no rules.

Media use rules vary widely. Some limit the amount of time kids consume media while others focus on content (such as rules that are based on widely used rating systems for music, movies and video games). No matter what kinds of rules are in place, kids who live with rules seem to realize more readily there’s more to life than entertainment and Web surfing.

Assessing the Impact
The authors of the “Generation M” study shy away from editorializing on the moral implications of their research, but they do point out two interesting correlations: Kids who have the highest media consumption levels have the lowest grades and the lowest levels of personal contentedness. 

Still, we shouldn’t hastily conclude that high media consumption causes low grades or lack of contentedness. Instead of high media use causing kids’ problems, it may be that young people who do poorly at school or are depressed about life want to spend more time with media so they can forget about their problems.

At least one author believes certain types of media consumption actually help people think. Steven Johnson, who had nothing to do with the Kaiser Family Foundation report, is the author of a new book titled Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.
Johnson’s counterintuitive hypothesis argues that acclaimed TV shows such as “24” and “The Sopranos” actually stimulate brain activity. They do so, Johnson says, by forcing viewers to carefully follow large numbers of characters, intersecting story lines and morally complex situations.

Such shows provide “cognitive workouts,”says Johnson, who traced the ebbs and flows of a recent episode of “24” and found 21 distinct characters and nine primary narrative threads.

While there are still plenty of TV shows that play down to their audiences, Johnson provocatively argues that some of the more complex shows to hit TV screens in the wake of 1981’s pioneering “Hill Street Blues” actually serve as intellectual wake-up calls for those viewers who are dedicated enough to follow them closely.

Ironically, the shows Johnson says are most intellectually demanding are the same shows that many conservative Christians love to hate, in part because they fail to give viewers black and white life lessons.

Johnson believes the best shows are those that challenge viewers to think through their own values. “What media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism,” he wrote in the April 24 issue of The New York Times Magazine. “The world doesn’t come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we’re better off with entertainment like ‘The Sopranos’ that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity.”

So here’s the reader’s handy summary paragraph. Researchers have proven that kids are consuming more media, but social observers disagree about whether this is good or bad. Maybe some future study will answer all these lingering questions.

But I suspect not.